Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/medilldc/5430941803/sizes/o/in/photostream/">Medill DC</a>/Flickr.
The coal industry adores House Speaker John Boehner, now more than ever. From Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal:
Donations from coal-industry interests account for more than 10% of the $12.5 million Mr. Boehner collected from Jan. 1 to June 30 for fundraising accounts he directly controls. Mr. Boehner’s personal campaign account collected less than $200,000 from the coal industry during the entire 2009-10 election cycle.
That means the coal industry’s now giving Boehner 24 times more the monthly contributions it gave him during 2009-10. Among Boehner’s top current donors is one of the Koch brothers, William, who heads Oxbow Corporation—an energy conglomerate with coal, natural gas, steel, and petroleum operations worth $4 billion in annual sales. In general, the Journal reports, the coal industry has ramped up its political giving since Obama was elected president, more than doubling its 2008 contributions in the latest election cycle, with about 75 percent of donations going to Republicans.
A Boehner spokesman assured the Journal that coal-industry giving constitutes a small fraction of the $30 million or so the speaker has raised for the Republican Party this year. But even if Boehner doesn’t find the coal industry’s givings significant, the spike in coal-backed donations to the House leader hasn’t gone unthanked, either, as the Journal points out, and as we’ve reported here before. Notably, since November 2010 the House has voted to prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse-gas emissions from coal-fired power plants and approved a bill that would strip the EPA’s authority to veto water permits issued by the Army Corps of Engineers.
All in all, under the current GOP-led House there’ve been some 125 votes to undermine environmental protection, from cutting funding for the EPA, the Department of Energy, and the Department of the Interior, limiting agencies’ authority to enforce the Clean Water Act and blocking the US from contributing to the international governing body on climate change. The legislative attack on environmental protection prompted a backlash from Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who on Monday called the House “the most anti-environment” in history upon releasing a search-and-sortable database of the 125 votes. (MoJo reporter Kate Sheppard has more on this.)
The swell in coal contributions to Boehner secures his place as the industry’s number-two favorite recipient, according data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Oxbow spokesman Brad Goldstein wrapped up the industry’s sentiment for the speaker unabashedly:
We are a big supporter of John Boehner. We think he’s good for business…He looks out for business interests, and he wants to create more jobs for America, while this administration has been rather harsh on the industry.
